Product Support Notices

vSphere Client. In vSphere 5.1, all new vSphere features are available only through the vSphere Web Client. The traditional vSphere Client will continue to operate, supporting the same feature set as vSphere 5.0, but not exposing any of the new features in vSphere 5.1.

vSphere 5.1 and its subsequent update and patch releases are the last releases to include the traditional vSphere Client. Future major releases of VMware vSphere will include only the vSphere Web Client.

For vSphere 5.1, bug fixes for the traditional vSphere Client are limited to security or critical issues. Critical bugs are deviations from specified product functionality that cause data corruption, data loss, system crash, or significant customer application down time where no workaround is available that can be implemented.

VMware Toolbox. vSphere 5.1 is the last release to include support for the VMware Tools graphical user interface, VMware Toolbox. VMware will continue to update and support the Toolbox command-line interface (CLI) to perform all VMware Tools functions.

VMI Paravirtualization. vSphere 4.1 was the last release to support the VMI guest operating system paravirtualization interface. For information about migrating virtual machines that are enabled for VMI so that they can run on later vSphere releases, see Knowledge Base article 1013842.

Windows Guest Operating System Customization. vSphere 5.1 is the last release to support customization for Windows 2000 guest operating systems. VMware will continue to support customization for newer versions of Windows guests.

VMCI Sockets. Guest-to-guest communications (virtual machine to virtual machine) are deprecated in the vSphere 5.1 release. This functionality will be removed in the next major release. VMware will continue support for host to guest communications.